Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

RUSZKIK HAZA! He was glad he had been the one—not Lucy—to open the door when the telegram arrived. What exactly, he’d wondered, did Skippy want done? Air strikes? Maybe just an airlift for all the priests the embassy in Budapest couldn’t hold? He’d also wondered why this frantic little cry—he could almost feel it being whispered into his ear, between ardent kisses of his neck—was coming only now. It could hardly have to do with just Hungary. Whatever it meant, it felt helpless, like the furtive leafleting said to be going on even now in the streets of Budapest. Fuller lit a match and watched the leaves catch fire. He had no compelling desire this afternoon for the keypunch operator, let alone Andy Sorrell. He felt himself, unexpectedly, wanting someone and something else. The radio, filling up the rest of halftime, had begun to play some old Tommy Dorsey songs, Dorsey having choked to death on a forkful of food earlier in the week. I’m getting sentimental over you. Things you say and do… He looked over his shoulder and back toward the house. On the breeze, smoke from Lucy’s cigarette joined the smoke from the leaves.